Page 34 of A Lot Like Adiós
“Ah. You always were an excellent hitter. But what about you? With that face and body, you must be kicking people out of bed left and right.”
He snorted and shook his head. “A few, here and there. I actually broke up with someone about a year ago. Well, I guess she broke up with me.”
“Was it serious?”
This was something he almost never talked about, but it was easy to open up to Michelle. “I think she wanted to get married eventually. And I don’t.”
“What happened?”
“The gym was more important.” Gabe knew how it sounded, saying that right after sex. It was laying down a boundary, but it was what he did now, what the people he had sex with needed to know about him. The business was his number-one priority.
Liv, his ex, had never understood that. She’d come from money, and work had been a lark to her, something to pass the time between vacations. She’d hated that Gabe couldn’t take off on “weekend getaways” with her whenever she felt like going to Napa or Vegas or Sedona.
Michelle didn’t ask him to elaborate. She just unplugged her laptop from where it was charging on the kitchen counter. “Then we’d better get started.”
“I’ve gotta get my stuff,” Gabe said, glad for the chance to get out of the kitchen. He needed to shake the feeling that he’d revealed more of himself than he’d intended. Sharing with Michelle felt too easy, too right.
He ran upstairs to the bedroom that once again held his suitcase. He should’ve known his attempt to leave would be met with failure. With a sigh, Gabe pulled out his laptop andergonomic Bluetooth mouse and mouse pad. He knew way too much about hand and finger-joint injuries to use the touch pad, and even the laptop keyboard, despite being a larger one, was pushing it. It was why he was going to teach the hand therapy class with Charisse when he got back to LA.
Downstairs, he sat across from Michelle at the old wooden dining table where they used to sit side by side doing homework. It wasn’t ideal positioning, since they’d have to spin their laptops around to show each other something on the screen, but having the table between them was symbolic of the distance they were trying to maintain.
Michelle had her laptop, a mouse, a fancy notebook, and at least half a dozen pens in different colors spread out next to her.
Once Gabe finished setting up, Michelle spun her laptop to face him.
“There’s a bit of a disconnect with your branding,” she said, getting right to business. The screen showed a website he was very familiar with—the Agility Gym home page.
“The design is... fine,” she went on. “But it’s very cold.”
There was that word again.Fine. And the website had cost over two thousand dollars.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s... okay. I would have done better, but not everyone is me.”
Gabe frowned at the website, which showed an artsy photograph of a fitness model lifting weights. “What do you mean?”
She gave him a look like she couldn’t believe how dense he was being. “It’s light blue, slate blue, and navy blue.”
“That last one is Yankees blue,” he pointed out. He’d been proud of that choice.
“Gabe. This branding was clearly designed by two dudebros. It’s boring.”
Before he could dispute being called a dudebro, she moved the cursor and opened the “About Us” page on the website.
“Look here,” she said, pointing at the photo of Gabriel and Fabian. “This looks like it’s out of some beefcake calendar, like ‘Real Househusbands of the Los Angeles Gym Scene.’”
Gabe groaned and covered his face. “It was our investor’s idea and that’s exactly what he was going for.”
“Really?” Michelle gave the picture a skeptical glance. “You look like two guys from the high school wrestling team about to win the dance battle that will save the rec center.”
A teen movie reference was absolutely not what Gabe was going for. “It’s not great.”
“The first thing we have to do is reconcile what your brand is saying about you and what youwantit to say about you.”
“Me?”
“The gym, Gabe. Keep up. You’re the face of the gym. It’s named after you, right? Aguilar. Agility.”
